


Healing Minds

by Captain Natasha Riker-Troi (textsfrompicard)



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Character Death Fix, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Gen, Happy Ending, Healing, Post-Canon Fix-It, Psychic Bond, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/textsfrompicard/pseuds/Captain%20Natasha%20Riker-Troi
Summary: The fix-it fic we all needed but no one else seems to have written yet: in which the Troi-Riker family becomes whole again.
Relationships: Thaddeus Troi-Riker/Soji Asha, William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	Healing Minds

**Author's Note:**

> In this context “healing” can be interpreted as both an adjective and a verb, to describe what Thad and Soji do/are for each other. Words spoken in Viveen are indicated in bold italics.

“Come on, we’re going to be late!” Kestra and Soji speed-walked down the path to the transporter station, Captain Crandall scrambling to catch up. They were on their way to the archery competition in Infinity Lake, and Kestra was eager to show off her talents to Soji. Kestra’s parents were not with them, having received a last-minute call from Starfleet Command-- the latest of many after the events on Coppelius only a few months before. There were still many questions that had to be resolved regarding the Coppelians, both legal and diplomatic, and the Troi-Rikers were among those best suited to help resolve such questions. They had sworn up and down to Kestra that they would try to get away in time for Kestra’s turn in the competition, but Kestra knew that there were no guarantees in Starfleet. There were no guarantees _outside_ of Starfleet either, for that matter, but at least you didn’t have to worry about your brother getting an incurable disease that wasn’t _really_ incurable because there was an _entire freaking planet_ full of androids that nobody knew about the _entire freaking time--_

 _Stop it, Kestra. You’re here to enjoy yourself. And it’s not like you’re going alone._ She glanced sideways at Soji, who had become like a surrogate sister to her after her arrival on Nepenthe. Kestra wasn’t an empath, but she was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. Soji didn’t have any “real” memories of Dahj, but her grief at losing her sister was as real as could be. Bonding with Kestra like this could only help both of them heal after their respective losses.

They finally arrived at the transporter station, and Crandall made his way over to the controls while Soji and Kestra took their places on the transporter pad. The girls waited impatiently as their chaperone programmed in their destination.

“Huh,” Crandall muttered suddenly. “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?” asked Kestra.

“The buffer isn’t clear. Usually the transporter operator is supposed to clear the pattern buffer after every transport, but it looks like Felix was careless. When he gets back from vacation I ought to-- wait.” His frown deepened. “This data is _three years old_. And it looks like it’s password-protected, so I can’t look at it or erase it.”

“What?” Kestra and Soji spoke in unison this time as they both stepped down from the transporter platform. Soji frowned. “Why would somebody go to all the trouble of saving a pattern in the buffer and protecting it like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Crandall as he worked the controls. “I only noticed because I actually opened the transporter’s memory folder instead of just erasing without looking inside. During normal transporter operation nowadays, you wouldn’t take that extra step, but back in my day you couldn’t be too careful. Transporters were less sophisticated and more dangerous back then, so I’ve kept up some of my habits from those days.”

“You can still transport us though, can’t you?” asked Kestra.

“Sure I can, but now my curiosity is piqued. Whose pattern is this, and who put it here?” He sighed. “I sure wish I was good enough with computers to unlock the data file and find out.”

“Maybe you could ask Felix to unlock it?” suggested Soji.

“It wasn’t Felix who put this here,” said Crandall. “Felix only started a few years ago, after Ralph passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Not long before Thad died,” he added, glancing sideways at Kestra. Reflexively, they all bowed their heads. There was a moment of silence, then Kestra had an idea.

“Soji, you could probably hack into it, couldn’t you? I mean, you’re an android. You’ve got super strength, super speed-- you probably have super computer skills, right?”

Soji shrugged. “I have no idea. But I didn’t know about the super strength or super speed either until I was… activated. I guess I could give it a try.” She stepped up to the console and poised her fingers over the holo-keys. Within milliseconds they blurred into a flurry of activity, faster than either Kestra or Crandall’s eyes could follow. They watched transfixed as Soji overcame safeguard after safeguard, taking down firewalls like they were made of tissue paper.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t try this yourself,” Soji said over her shoulder to Crandall, not visibly appearing to slow down in the least. “There are multiple layers of password protection, each one in Viveen. If you had tried to guess a word in any other language, the system would have locked you out permanently and no one but the person who originally constructed the program-- Ralph, I guess-- would be able to get inside.”

“ _Viveen?_ ” Kestra’s voice rose in astonishment as Crandall’s eyebrows went up. “I had no idea Ralph had picked up that much Viveen. Even Mom never really learned it and she _lived_ with us.”

“I’m in,” Soji said suddenly, her fingers coming to an abrupt halt. The data file opened before them, and they froze, stunned beyond all reason. For this was what the file said:

_Stardate: 71649.68  
Subject: Troi-Riker, Thaddeus Worf  
Pattern completion: 99.9999998%  
Pattern degradation: 0.0000002%_

From the stardate they could tell the pattern had been saved just a few weeks before Thad’s death. What they could not fathom was the motivation behind it.

“How…” Kestra’s mouth somehow felt dry and clammy at the same time. “Why… who...”

“The ‘who’ and the ‘how’ appear to be obvious,” said Crandall. “The ‘why’, not so much.”

“But isn't it?” asked Soji. “I mean, he was dying, right? Maybe this Ralph guy decided to… make a backup of Thad in case he died before you could find a cure.”

“But why wouldn’t he _tell_ us?” persisted Kestra.

“Maybe he intended to,” said Crandall. “If Soji’s right, then Ralph did this as a safety precaution. Making a ‘backup’ of Thad would have been a… well, a _backup_ , in case he couldn’t be cured before he died. It’s entirely possible he didn’t want to get your family’s hopes up. Perhaps he was even concerned that your parents would have a moral objection to essentially making a backup copy of their son. And considering the abrupt nature of his death, he probably didn’t anticipate himself dying before Thad, and so never made any alternate plans for telling you what he’d done.”

Soji raised an eyebrow. “He went to all the trouble of making a backup of Thad, but he didn’t make any backups for his own plans?”

Crandall shrugged. “We’re speculating after the fact, Soji. We don’t _have_ all the facts.”

“None of this matters anyway,” Kestra interrupted, her eyes glowing with a fierce intensity. “The point is, we’re here now, we have a cure for Thad, and we’re perfectly capable of rematerializing him. So why don’t we just _do_ it?”

Soji and Crandall were momentarily struck dumb by the suggestion. As obvious as it was, it was not the way they were accustomed to thinking of transporter operation. Even by the late 24th century, no one had ever suggested ‘resurrecting’ a deceased person from a transporter trace pattern. There were simply too many ethical and moral quandaries to contend with. But it was beginning to look increasingly as though the late Ralph had intended for them to do just that. The question was, would they actually be achieving their desired goal, or would it simply be the most accurate illusion imaginable?

“What if we do rematerialize him from this pattern?” Soji finally asked. “How will we know if it’s the same Thad or if we’re just making a copy of him?”

“I don’t think it really matters,” Kestra insisted. “Dad and Uncle Thomas were exactly identical when they were both rematerialized. It was their radically different experiences afterwards that made them different. So if we rematerialize him now, then he’ll be the same Thad that went into the buffer.” She looked down at her feet, momentarily overcome with emotion. “The same Thad we knew.”

Soji hesitated. “What about Thad himself? How would he feel about… essentially being a backup copy of himself? What if he doesn’t think he’s the ‘real’ Thad?”

“He won’t even know the difference--”

“But we’ll have to explain to him what happened. And shouldn’t we tell your parents before we try this?”

“If it works, we’ll tell them. If it doesn’t work, they won’t ever need to know.”

Unable to refute Kestra’s argument, Soji reluctantly acquiesced. This was starting to remind her a little too much of her conversation with Deanna about ‘real’ versus ‘not real’. Soji was still trying to sort out her identity, to reconcile her false human memories with her real android memories. She didn’t want to put Thad through a similar identity crisis, but neither could she deny Kestra the chance to get her brother back, after a fashion. The girls looked at Crandall. “Would you like to do the honors?” Kestra asked.

Crandall nodded, still rendered speechless by the enormity of what they were about to do. Soji stepped aside as he resumed his position in front of the transporter controls. He reached out with his hands and slowly went through the rematerilization sequence.

******************************

As the world rematerialized around Thad, he was momentarily confused. _Why are we still at the station? Did something go wrong with the transport?_ His confusion increased when he realized that he was standing alone on the transporter platform. His parents were nowhere to be seen, but in front of him Captain Crandall stood behind the transporter controls with Kestra (who for some reason appeared to be a few inches taller than she was a moment ago) and a beautiful girl who looked strangely familiar, though he couldn’t recall ever seeing her before. As he focused his senses on the trio, he realized that he couldn’t sense the girl’s emotions or presence at all. He was momentarily panicked, thinking he was experiencing another episode, but he could sense Kestra and Crandall no problem, and one quick wiggle of his arms and legs demonstrated their lack of paralysis. He looked back at Kestra, impatient for a familiar face to explain the situation.

“Kestra? What happened? Where’s Mom and Dad? And why are you taller?”

Kestra just stared at her brother in stunned silence. Despite the fact that this was her idea, she couldn’t believe that it had actually worked. Joy finally overcame her shocked amazement, and she sprinted forward to embrace Thad.

“Whoa!” He laughed as he returned her sister’s embrace. “You’d think I’d been gone for--” He stopped, frowning. “Okay, there’s _definitely_ something wrong here. Either the transporter shrank me, or you’ve grown at least three inches in the past three minutes. What’s going on?”

Kestra stepped back just far enough to look up at her brother while still maintaining her grip on him. “It hasn’t been three minutes, Thaddy,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s been three _years_.”

******************************

Meanwhile, back at the Troi-Riker homestead, Will and Deanna were deep within their conference call with Admirals Picard and Clancy with no respite in sight. “I reactivated my commission only _temporarily_ ,” said Will for what felt like the hundredth time. “I didn’t have any intention of returning to Starfleet permanently.”

 _“I understand, Will,”_ Picard interjected before Clancy could drop another F-bomb. _“But the simple fact is, we need you. Both of you.”_

Will and Deanna looked at each other. They were long past the need for words, even telepathically spoken ones. They knew they were of one mind on this. “We’re happy to continue advising Starfleet when necessary,” said Deanna. “But we have a home and a family here on Nepenthe. We can’t just drop everything whenever Starfleet gets caught with its pants down.”

Even Clancy seemed caught off guard by Deanna’s uncharacteristically harsh response. Below the viewscreen’s field of view, Will laid a reassuring hand on his wife’s knee. After the discovery of Coppelius and the liberation of its android population from hiding, Deanna had been in a strangely somber, almost dark mood. Will at first believed it was due to the second death of their friend Data, but then he discovered the true reason about six weeks later.

_He woke in the middle of the night, tears staining his pillow. He’d been dreaming of Thad again, or was it Deanna’s dreams bleeding over into his own? Instinctively, he reached out for his wife, but her side of the bed was empty. Perplexed, he sat up, reaching out for her through their mind-link. Her mind shone like a beacon in his thoughts as he followed it down the stairs, out the door, and through the woods to the clearing that was the site of the first time Kestra successfully shot a bunnicorn, which Thad had facetiously named the Great Bunnicorn Massacre of ‘94. It was also the place where they buried Thad just two short years later, and it was where Deanna was now, kneeling in front of their son’s grave. She gave no sign that she was aware of his approach, but neither did she stop him as he approached and knelt down beside her. They gazed at Thad’s name in silence._

_Deanna finally spoke, her voice thick with emotion. “They were there the whole time,” she said bitterly._

_“Who was where?”_

_“The androids, on Coppelius. You heard what Jean-Luc said Rios told him. They were there_ nine years ago, _a whole_ year _before Thad got sick. They were there_ THE WHOLE TIME, _and we had no idea--”_

_Her fury was gone as quickly as it appeared, dissolving rapidly into uncontrollable sobbing. Will held his wife close as he rocked her back and forth, stroking her hair. He planted a kiss on the top of her head, trying to distract himself from wondering just why it had taken him so long to make the connection between the timing of Rios’s tale and that of Thad’s diagnosis. Maybe he’d been aware of it subconsciously and chosen to ignore it. It would certainly be better than this impotent rage that now threatened to consume them both._

_“There’s nothing we can do about it now,_ Imzadi _,” he said, doing his best to reassure her even though the words sounded hollow to his ears. “It’s all in the past.”_

_“That’s the problem.” Deanna continued weeping into his shoulder. “_ Thad’s _all in the past.”_

_“Naturally we’re not asking you to inconvenience yourselves in any way,”_ Clancy said, bringing the Troi-Rikers back to the present. _“But we need all hands on deck for this, and the two of you are some of the few remaining Starfleet officers that have experience working with androids and thinking of them as actual_ people, _rather than tools.”_

Will nodded, unable to refute this. “Of course we know how important this is, and we’re happy to help the Coppelians achieve equality. Maybe there’s a way we can still contribute remotely, without having to leave Nepenthe…”

Will kept talking, but Deanna was suddenly distracted by a mysteriously familiar buzzing noise that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The other three didn’t seem to hear anything unusual, so Deanna concluded that the noise was psionic in nature, and existed only in her mind. But what could be causing it? She reached out with her mind, passing over the mind-links she shared with Will, Thad, and Kestra in search of--

She stopped. _Wait. Stop. Go back. What?_ No, it hadn’t been her imagination: where there had been two mind-links, with Will and Kestra respectively, there now were three. Or rather there _had_ been three, but her mind-link with Thad had dissolved upon his death, leaving behind only two. She had expected to feel his presence abruptly disappear from her mind, but instead he had almost seemed to drift away, as though he were only falling asleep and could awaken at any time. It made his death seem more peaceful, though it had done nothing to lessen the pain that followed.

But now there was definitely a _third_ link in her mind again, appearing with all of the abruptness that hadn’t characterized its departure. She probed it once, twice, a third time, too numb with astonishment to fully process the ramifications. And then she received a probe back.

“... and I’m sure Dr. Soong would be more than happy to-- wait. Deanna? Where are you going?”

But Deanna was already out the door, leaping over the porch steps and racing down the front walk to the path that led to the transporter station on the edge of town. Forgetting his unfinished sentence, Will rose from his chair and ran after Deanna, leaving Picard and Clancy staring after them in utter confusion.

******************************

“So let me see if I get this straight,” Thad said. Kestra, Soji, and Crandall had wasted no time filling him in on everything that had transpired over the past three years, with particular emphasis on more recent events. “For whatever reason, Ralph kept a backup copy of me from the last time I used the transporter. But then he died, so he couldn’t tell anyone about it. Then _I_ died, three years go by, and Uncle Jean-Luc showed up at our house with Soji, who’s an android and that’s why I can’t sense her emotions. There’s a planet full of androids that Bruce Maddox and Dr. Soong’s biological son had been building in secret, because there’s a super-secret group of Romulans that hate artificial life and want to exterminate it. This super-secret Romulan group follows Jean-Luc and company to the android planet, where one of the androids tries to summon this ancient synth civilization that left the message that caused a small group of Romulans to go insane and found this super-secret synth eradication society in the first place. But Jean-Luc and Soji shut it down, the ancient synths and the would-be Romulan synth assassins went back to wherever they came from, and now the synth ban has been lifted. Do I have all that right?”

“Pretty much,” said Kestra. She hugged her brother again, still finding it difficult to believe that he was really back, and _permanently_ back, now. The greatest wrong she’d ever known in her short life had been undone. It was almost like a miracle. “But you left out one thing. Because the ban was lifted, and because we have Soji right here, we can cure you now. You can look forward to the rest of your life now, without having to know it’s going to end soon.”

Thad was about to respond, but then he became distracted by something the others couldn’t perceive. His eyes grew distant. “Someone’s coming.”

Kestra rose and followed her brother’s gaze. In the distance she could see a petite brunette figure sprinting towards them. As the figure approached she was able to make out her mother’s Grecian features, and her father appeared on the horizon behind her.

“And the other shoe drops,” said Soji dryly.

Crandall got to his feet. “Maybe I should meet them before they get here and try to explain--”

“No,” said Thad firmly. “I think they should hear it from me.”

“This was _my_ idea,” argued Kestra. “ _I_ should be the one to--”

“It’s moot anyway,” said Soji. “They’re already here.”

Deanna and Will finally arrived, out of breath from having sprinted the nearly half a kilometer from the house to the transporter station. Despite their mutual exhaustion, they continued forward until they were standing face-to-face with their son. Deanna reached out a trembling hand to caress Thad’s cheek. “Thad…?”

Thad tried to give his parents a reassuring grin, but the intensity of their emotions overwhelmed him. He felt his eyes fill up with tears as he said through his rapidly constricting throat, “It’s me. I was in the transporter buffer. It’s a long story.” Kestra, Soji, and Crandall hastily filled Will and Deanna in on the details of what had transpired.

Deanna was the first to break down, wrapping her arms around him as she sobbed into his soft, fluffy brown hair, weeping tears of joy. Will and Kestra followed suit, and soon the whole family was ensconced in a four-way embrace, complete again for the first time in far, far too long. Soji and Crandall stood somewhat self-consciously off to one side, watching the spectacle unfold. Briefly, Soji reviewed her false memories of her own four-person nuclear family. _I have a real family on Coppelius, or as ‘real’ as synthetic life-forms can be. But just once I wish I could have really known a father, a mother, and a sister. I wish I could have been part of something like this._

Finally the Troi-Rikers disengaged themselves from one another, though Deanna still maintained her grip on Thad’s shoulder, as though she were afraid he would disappear if she let go all the way. “Well,” said Will, trying and failing to assume a dignified expression, “I think we have an appointment to make at the hospital. Mr. Troi-Riker--” just then his throat closed up, forcing him to stop and collect himself before continuing, “-- do you wish to take your station?”

Thad smiled broadly. “Yes, sir!” He leapt forward eagerly, bounding up onto the transporter platform, when he suddenly lost his footing. He tried to flail his arms, but they, along with his legs, were paralyzed, as had happened with increasing frequency as his condition worsened. He resigned himself to the fact that _once again_ someone was going to have to catch him and carry him like a helpless baby until he regained his freedom of movement, and he fell backwards into… Soji’s arms.

Thad blinked. _What? Oh, that’s right-- she’s an android. She’s stronger than she looks._ He grinned up at her. “Wow. What’s the heaviest you can lift?”

“Well, so far… you. But I’m strong enough to punch through a solid duranium floor.”

His eyes widened in amazement. "Wow," he said again. "That’s pretty strong.”

“Yeah.”

Thad frowned. Soji didn’t seem entirely enthusiastic about her floor-punching prowess. He wished he was able to sense her emotions so he could know for sure. But then again, if he could sense her emotions, she wouldn’t be an android, and therefore she wouldn’t be able to help him. He would just have to figure out what she was thinking some other way, then. It was obvious to him already that Kestra had forged a sibling-like bond with Soji during his… absence, and that alone was reason enough for him to befriend her as well. Besides, he felt compelled to get to know her better regardless. There was something about her that seemed to command his attention.

The other Troi-Rikers assembled on the transporter platform next to Soji and Thad. “Energize,” Will commanded, and Crandall complied, sending the Troi-Riker family to their son’s salvation.

******************************

Thad’s healing was strangely anticlimactic compared to the successive angst, despair, grief, and euphoria that accompanied his sickness, death, and ‘rebirth’. The Troi-Rikers explained over and over again to the doctors at Infinity Lake General Hospital what had occurred at the transporter station, talking over one another in their excitement and impatience, until at long last Thad and Soji were fully prepped for the 18-hour procedure. There was no way in hell they were going to make it to the archery competition now, but nobody seemed to mind.

Thad and Soji lay beside each other on identical biobeds, monitors beeping over their heads as doctors and nurses swarmed around them. The procedure was a relatively simple one, but it had not been performed in more than two decades. As a result, nearly four times the required staff was on hand in the surgical theater, and the procedure was actually taking place in a theater instead of a regular room because a large proportion of the hospital staff who couldn’t fit in the theater itself insisted on gathering in the observation gallery overhead to witness this historic event. Thad’s family was there as well, gazing down on a sight they thought they would never see even in their wildest dreams.

Thad turned his head to the side until he could see Soji out of the corner of his eye. He had been instructed not to move his head too much, but he wanted to find a way to strike up a conversation with Soji. He felt self-conscious with so many other people around, but he couldn’t think of a way to get the privacy he wanted. She probably had super hearing in addition to super strength, so if he whispered under his breath she would probably hear it. But how could she respond to him in a way he would hear but the medical staff could not?

As he was trying to reason a way out of this dilemma, Soji turned her head in his direction and said in flawless Viveen, **_"Do the emotions of all these people feel overwhelming to you?"_**

Thad’s eyes widened. **_"You speak Viveen?"_**

**_"Kestra showed me your dictionary when I first came to your house. I read the whole thing."_ **

**_"Wow, that’s incredible. Remind me to show you the dictionaries for my other languages once we’re out of here. But your question… um, well, not really, because I can block them out pretty well. I also can’t sense them as strongly as Mom can, being only a quarter Betazoid, and also my… condition affects my empathic sense. But I can tell they’re all very excited. This is like Christmas morning to them."_ **

He fell silent then as a nurse affixed a cortical monitor to his forehead. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, then Soji said, **_"What’s bothering you?"_**

**_"Nothing."_ **

**_"Liar. Your heart rate is up, which I would be able to tell even without looking at your monitor. You’re about to be cured of a heretofore incurable disease, but you’re still dissatisfied about something. Out with it."_ **

He scowled at her until one of the doctors used a piece of equipment to secure his head firmly in place, forcing him to look straight up at the distant ceiling. Reluctantly, he confided in her his deepest fear. **_"Am I the ‘real’ Thad? Or am I just a copy of him?"_**

 ** _"Does it matter?"_** Soji smiled, hearing herself echo Kestra’s earlier words. Was she just trying to convince herself and Thad that he was real, or had Kestra been right after all?

**_"What do you mean?"_ **

**_"Well, who do you_ think _you are?"_**

Taken aback by the basic nature of the question, Thad responded sarcastically, **_"Uh— I’m Thaddeus Troi-Riker, Son of the Fifth House, Heir to the Sacred Chalice of Rixx and the Holy Rings of Betazed, of course."_**

**_"The sacred what now?"_ **

**_"It’s a long story."_ **

**_"Right. Well, anyway… if you’re exactly identical to the ‘original’ Thad, with all the same memories and experiences and thoughts and feelings… does it matter if you’re_ not _the original? If you’re exactly the same, then you have as much claim to your identity as the Thad who died."_**

Thad did not respond. Soji’s head had now been rendered immobile as well, so she couldn’t turn to look at him. But she could tell that his heartbeat had slowed slightly, enough to indicate that he was thinking about her words, but not enough to suggest that he’d internalized or accepted them. Her courage increasing, she decided to return his confidence with one of her own, something she’d been giving more thought to ever since Kestra first suggested retrieving Thad from the buffer. **_"You know… for the last three years I thought I was as human as you are. Then my entire world, my entire perception of_ reality, _got yanked out from under me. I wasn’t real, my relationship wasn’t real…_ nothing _was real. But your sister helped me a lot with that, with becoming comfortable with myself again. And your mom, too."_**

Thad smiled. **_"Yeah, they’re really good at that. When I first got sick… I was so scared I didn’t even want to think about it. I could barely even grasp the_ concept _of death, never mind the idea that I personally was going to just be_ gone _within a few years. And we didn’t even know how much time I had left. But Mom and Dad and Kestra… they always made me feel so safe and secure and_ loved _. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them."_**

Soji sighed wistfully. **_"I wish I had parents. Parents that aren’t just a figment of my imagination, I mean."_**

**_"Well... maybe my parents can be like_ your _parents. I know that Kestra already considers you to be like a sister."_**

Soji chuckled. **_"I guess that would make you my brother then, wouldn’t it?_**

Thad blanched. **_"Oh God, no, I didn’t mean— not that I want to be presumptuous— it’s just that you’re really pretty and... I’m sorry. I never thought I’d live long enough to even have to_ think _about this kind of thing."_**

__

__

Soji blinked rapidly, suddenly feeling embarrassed but not sure why. **_"Um… what kind of thing?"_**

**_"You know… girls."_ **

**_"Oh."_ **

Silence fell between them, save for the beeping of medical instruments and the rapid-fire exchange that was typical of doctors during life-saving procedures. Thad was just starting to worry that he’d scared her off when Soji spoke again.

**_"It doesn’t matter to you that I’m a synth? That I could lift your entire body over my head with one hand if I wanted?"_ **

Thad grinned. **_"I’m used to strong women."_**

Soji laughed aloud in spite of herself. **_"You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know that?"_**

Thad’s tone took on a mischievous quality. **_"It runs in the family."_**

As Thad and Soji continued to laugh and chat animatedly (or as animatedly as they could considering they weren’t permitted to move most of their bodies), Deanna leaned over the observation gallery’s railing to better observe the pair. She couldn’t quite understand most of what they were saying, but she didn’t need to know all the exact words in order to get the gist of their conversation. As she zeroed her empathic sense in on the two of them, she still couldn’t sense anything from Soji, but Thad seemed to be figuratively quivering with nervous energy. He was the perfect picture of a smitten teenager in the throes of his first crush, and Deanna’s eyes welled up with tears of joy and gratitude. She hadn’t given much thought to this particular milestone in Thad’s life before he got sick, and after he got sick she preferred not to look too far ahead, instead choosing to take things one day at a time. She’d been dreadfully certain that Thad wouldn’t live long enough for such long-term considerations as romantic entanglements to even be relevant, and now endless vistas were opening up before him. It was staggering. Of course, Soji was a little old for Thad, at least physically. But then again, she was actually _younger_ than him chronologically. Maybe there was a middle ground in there somewhere.

She felt pressure on both her hands, and she looked around to see her husband and daughter on either side of her, squeezing each of her hands in one of their own. She squeezed back, smiling. One of the few words she had managed to learn in Viveen was the word for _family_ , which was identical to the Betazoid word for _togetherness_ (in the emotional sense). It had been a long time, but at last her family was complete again, and together in every possible way. They could look forward again, without looking every which way at _might-have-beens_ and _what-ifs_ and _if-onlys_. Ardani’s most cherished son had at last returned home.

******************************

The rest of the family had been shocked that Thad wanted to do this, and had even tried to talk him out of it. But Thad wouldn’t hear of it. “I need closure,” he said. “You’ve all had three years to get used to the idea that I was dead, but from my perspective it literally just happened. I need to see it with my own eyes before I can move forward with my life.”

So now they were all standing in the woods in front of Thad’s grave, as the setting sun caused the marble to shimmer and dance in the light. Soji had tried to bow out, claiming that she wasn’t really part of the family, but the Troi-Rikers had insisted otherwise, so she was there too, standing next to Kestra. The four of them were standing a little behind Thad, so as to give him some measure of privacy. 

“I’ve been here before,” Thad said suddenly. The others looked at him, startled. “In a dream, right after we first got my diagnosis. You three were all here,” he continued, indicating his parents and sister, “and I kept trying to tell you that everything was fine: I’d found Ardani, and it was perfect. It was everything I’d ever dreamed it could be. Everything looked and sounded and smelled just like I’d imagined it. But none of you could hear me.”

Nobody spoke, but Deanna stroked her son’s hair, and Will briefly clasped his shoulder. Thad felt endless waves of parental love and affection pouring out of them, repeatedly washing over, around, and through him. He wondered idly if it was possible to literally drown in emotions. He hoped not; he didn’t want to have to put them through this again if he could avoid it.

Kestra walked around until she was standing in front of Thad and hugged him fiercely. “We can hear you now,” she said.

Soji hesitated, then she too came forward, taking Thad’s hand in her own. **_"We all can."_**

Thad smiled. He remembered something that Kestra had told him, about his (the other Thad’s?) final moments. As he lay dying, he’d looked up at his parents and sister and said with his dying breath, “Thank you for my life.” Back then, he’d obviously meant to thank his parents for giving him life in the first place, and for giving him a homeworld to call Ardani, and a family to share it with. But now the phrase took on an entirely different meaning. Now he quite literally owed Kestra and Soji his life, for retrieving him from the transporter buffer _and_ for making it possible for him to finally be cured. He looked down at himself, still in a state of numb disbelief at the idea that his body was _his_ again, that he could send signals to his arms and legs with his brain and they would actually _move_ on command instead of seizing up in paralysis, rendering him immobile and helpless. And when he extended his empathic senses, they didn’t flicker feebly on and off, like a dying light bulb. The psionic input from around him remained steady and strong, and he was overwhelmed with gratitude for the ones who made it possible. Who made _him_ possible.

He looked at Kestra and Soji, his heart full beyond measure. “Thank you for my life.”


End file.
